


Bragging Gets You Nowhere

by kamja



Series: Fairy tale rewrites [3]
Category: Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, Johnny's Entertainment
Genre: Comedy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 05:05:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamja/pseuds/kamja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jin promises his firstborn son to Rumpelstiltskin -- I mean, Johnny -- in order to become a star.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bragging Gets You Nowhere

In a hole in the ground there lived a boy. Not a nasty, smelly boy who played in the mud, and not a priggish boy who took his morning toast with milk and the New York Times. No, this boy was quite normal and perhaps a little good-looking, and that was that.

This boy loved to sing and dance. He dreamed of being a celebrity one day. His father was very proud of this boy and bragged to the local TV station, "My son is the best singer and dancer on this side of the Mississippi."

The TV producer said, "Is that so? Let me see."

And so, the boy was locked in a recording studio and told to make a music video. If he succeeded, the TV station would give him a contract. If he failed, he would be doomed to work as a lunch lady (complete with hair net) at the local high school for the rest of his life.

The boy tried for many hours to produce a nice video, but nothing seemed to work. He just didn’t know how to make it exciting, and it surely would help if he had some backup dancers or set designers to help him out. He sat down and held his head in his hands.

"Whatever shall I do? I will be serving overcooked green beans at this rate!"

All of a sudden, a man appeared in the studio. "You! What's the matter? Why are you in despair?"

"I need to make a music video!"

The man looked around him and saw the failed attempts. In the last one, the boy resorted to construction-paper stop motion with mixed results. "If I help you make the video, what will you give me?"

The boy thought for a minute. "I can give you my baseball mitt!"

The man agreed because he loved baseball, and made a music video for the boy. The TV station liked the work and signed the boy immediately. Then they locked him in the studio and told him to make two videos. As expected, the useless boy could not make them. He held his head in his hands again. Now he was surely to be sent to the cafeteria now!

Suddenly the man from last time appeared again. "You! More videos? What will you give me this time?"

"What's your name, anyway?"

"Oh, that's easy. I'm Johnny."

"Johnny, will you help me if I give you my porno tape?" Like I said, the boy didn't play in the mud and wasn't stuck up. But he certainly had a lot of interesting things hidden under the bed like most other boys his age.

"Sounds good to me," Johnny replied perhaps a little more gleefully than last time. His glee increased when he saw that sassy pirate wenches were involved. He made the videos as quick as the boy can wink. "You're gonna hit the big time with these."

And Johnny was right. The boy became quite famous. But then the TV station demanded three videos. They assured him it'd be the end, because then he could live on the royalties forever. The boy felt happy to hear that, but he still could not make videos.

"You! Got any more porno tapes?" Johnny asked as he appeared again.

The boy shook his head. "No. But I do have some video games."

"Nah, video games are a waste of time."

"I don't have anything else to give you."

Johnny thought for a moment. "Then how about your firstborn child?"

Something like that was too far in the future for the boy to think about, so he agreed.

Johnny made the videos and the boy, now a man, was able to live off the royalties in comfort. He eventually married an actress and by and by, she was pregnant. It was reported widely on the media.

"That's a bad idea," said the man's colleagues. "Johnny will come for him."

It was a little known fact, but all the idols helped by Johnny made the same bargain. So, they silently vowed to never marry (or in the more efficient alternative, just screw each other) and to never let the public know about their illegitimate children. They secreted the kids away to other countries through an underground railroad. It really wasn’t such a bad life for those children. They got to attend nice schools and go skiing in the Alps, thanks to their wealthy fathers.

Somehow or another, the man didn't get the memo about all that. Or maybe he did, but then forgot about it or possibly used it to make a paper airplane to annoy those other idols he sometimes had to work with.

So when the child was born, Johnny showed up at the man's condo.

"You! It's time to hold your part of the bargain. Gimme the kid."

The man's wife was distraught. She got on her knees and tugged on the hem of Johnny’s sparkly coat. "Oh please, don't take my child away from me!!"

The man also got on his knees and begged. "Please Johnny, won't you take something else? I'll give you some of my royalties instead!"

Johnny thought for a minute. "Well, I will let you keep the kid if I cannot guess your name in three days' time."

The man looked at Johnny like he'd gone mad. Anyone could look up his name in five minutes. However, Johnny began guessing right away.

"Are you Koyama?"

"No."

"Matsumoto."

"No."

"Ueda."

"No."

Johnny scratched his chin. "This is harder than I thought. I will return!"

And so, Johnny returned the next day.

"Okada? Takaki? Yokoyama?"

"No, not at all."

"Is this guy for real?" the man's wife asked when Johnny left to think about it some more.

The man shrugged. "I have no idea."

On the morning of the third day, Johnny woke up in his mansion and sat there thinking. He wanted to get that child, so he could form a new boy band consisting of only infant members and permanently cement his world record for producing the youngest musical act in the world. The only thing that could ever beat him would be a group of fetuses, and everyone knew that fetuses couldn’t sing. To get that child, Johnny knew he had to be devious, possibly the most devious he had ever been in his long existence.

He did a backwards search of the man’s address in the phone book.

“Your name is Jina.” It was a couple of hours later, at the man’s condo.

“What?”

Johnny slowed down and looked at the sticky note in his hand with care. Oh, he was in the danger zone now. He didn’t want to mess up. He squinted at his bad handwriting.

“Oh, my bad. Jin.”

Jin’s wife burst into tears. Johnny took it to mean that he had won, so he gleefully ran into the nursery and grabbed the child. “Now my collection is complete!”

“This isn’t over yet, Johnny!” Jin shook his fists at Johnny.

Johnny shot a sneer over his shoulder as he left. “Oh, but it is.”

By next Wednesday, the media was abuzz with the news about a boy band with the average age of 4 months. It is unknown what their debut single sounded like; everyone was too busy losing their marbles over the adorable PV. The song shot up to the number one spot on Oricon, and stayed there for an entire 6 months. Johnny rubbed his hands with glee. He paid the babies with mashed bananas and kept the rest of the money for himself. Then he got a plaque from the World Records Association and he hung it on his wall.

“Ah, the sweet smell of victory,” he sighed, leaning back and contemplating what to do next while the babies played with blocks on the floor of his office. He elegantly ignored the fact that it sort of smelled like poo because one of his new employees needed changing.

In this manner, a few years passed. The babies eventually grew up and were able to walk around and talk, and most importantly, get potty trained. Sometimes, paparazzi photos of them coming and going to kindergarten got into the gossip magazines.

Jin and his wife clipped the tabloids carefully for their scrapbook and made sure to DVR all of their son’s TV appearances. The son was currently hosting a variety show about the alphabet. It was popular among the 0-5 demographic.

“At least he looks like he’s having fun,” Jin’s wife said wistfully as she watched her son explain the letter E. It was such a mysterious topic. Two episodes were devoted to it. She tearfully got ready to work. Every day, she hoped her manager would tell her that she’d been cast in a new drama with her son, or at the very least, with one of her son’s groupmates. However, it seemed like she was mysteriously blacklisted from appearing on the same show with any of them.

The days passed, and finally the son had worked up to W. He was heading back home from the TV studio when he encountered a middle-aged woman selling toys and candy by the road.

“Hello, little boy,” she greeted sweetly. “I have a sale on baseballs today. Would you like one? They’re all the rage in Roppongi right now.”

The son liked to keep up with trends, so he handed the woman tomorrow’s lunch money. In return, she handed him a new baseball. It was made of white leather with red stitching, just like the ones used by the pros. He sniffed it gingerly. It smelled a little like new-car smell, but better.

“Be careful now, you might lose it if you throw it too far,” the woman said before pushing her toy-cart away.

Since the ball obviously had to be tested, the son went to the park. Meanwhile, the woman smiled to herself as she went home to her condo.

The next day, Johnny stormed into his headquarters shaking a newspaper in his fist. “I want that kid in my office now!”

The son fidgeted as he stood in front of Johnny’s desk. The front page of the newspaper was sprawled out:

FAMOUS IDOL BREAKS WINDOW WITH BASEBALL DURING FREAK ACCIDENT IN THE PARK - TO BE FINED FOR PROPERTY DAMAGE AND DISTURBING THE PEACE

“We can never recover from a scandal of this magnitude,” Johnny fumed. “There’s nothing left for you here, kid. You’ve ruined your career. Pack up your stuff and get out.”

The son got his crayons and left. His bandmates waved goodbye, and promised to come over sometime to visit. They were kinda jealous, to be honest, since now the son could pick his nose in public and no one would care. His manager took him back to Jin’s condo.

“Welcome home, dear,” his mother greeted warmly. She fed him some lunch, and he liked her immediately, because she cut off the crusts on his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Then his father came home, and the son felt that he looked familiar, but he wasn’t sure why. Jin smiled and patted his son’s head. He then went to rummage around in the storage closet for their blender, since this occasion called for some milkshakes. In the very back, there was a cardboard box stuffed with a wig, a dress and a bunch of baseballs.


End file.
